Land-use, management and design doctorate student Gisou Salkhi has been awarded the Elo and Olga Urbanovsky Fellowship for her research on how to improve campus walkability.
I’m excited to live in a world where a new Moni Mohsin book is out, alliteratively titled The Impeccable Integrity of Ruby R. In it, Mohsin melds the humour of her Butterfly novels with the serious attention to social injustice and gender issues that distinguished her debut, The End of Innocence.
Not surprisingly, her nose for the zeitgeist has led Mohsin to select a topic of prime interest and importance. She scrutinises the backstabbing world of contemporary Pakistani politics. Here, Saif Haq is a celebrity-turned-politician now leading a party called Integrity. Attracting millennial voters in their droves, the party’s stated mission is to combat injustice, exploitation and corruption. Saif also claims to protect the honour of the nation’s mothers and daughters with reverence and religiosity.
Moni Mohsin on how her new book explores Pakistan s volatile politics through social media s lenses The author, known for using satire to slice open the discrepancies in society, uses the protagonist in her new book The Impeccable Integrity of Ruby R and her hero worship of an aspiring prime minister to expose the ugly underbelly of social media. Mallik Thatipalli January 03, 2021 09:33:44 IST Author Moni Mohsin
A hero with clay feet, an army of trolls and a nation to win over
The Impeccable Integrity of Ruby R is a novel whose time has arrived. Though the story unravels in Pakistan, it could easily be India or any other country, for that matter, in which politicians use social media as a toxic tool to intimidate and bully those who disagree.
HarperCollins India | Rs 499 | 240 pages
Award-winning translator Narayan Hegde translates literary giant UR Ananthamurthy’s novel, first published in 1978, from the Kannada. It’s a country struggling with corruption, whose prime minister is on the way to becoming a ruthless dictator. From his sickbed, revolutionary leader Krishnappa Gowda tackles the schemes of party men, grapples with his conscience, and through a memory that comes and goes, looks for the true meaning of life.
Read more about the book here.
Out of Print: Ten Years: An Anthology of Stories
Edited by Indira Chandrasekhar
Writer, scientist, and
Out of Print founder Indira Chandrasekhar, who set up the literary magazine in 2010 to focus on short stories, brings together select pieces from the publication’s first decade. They reinforce ideas that speak to the spirit of the magazine, including diversity of literary voices, open-mindedness about experimentation, and focus on Indian-language publishing. Above
Dog-Eared: The end of mirth
Dog-Eared: The end of mirth
BySupriya NairSupriya Nair / Updated: Dec 17, 2020, 06:00 IST
SUPRIYA-NAIR
The irrepressible writer Moni Mohsin is publishing a new novel to take the edge off this bitter year. Or so you tell yourself, until you crack open The Impeccable Integrity Of Ruby R. and realise that it’s a tragedy in the packaging of a comedy.
Ruby R. isn’t about the pandemic. It’s a story about the subcontinent’s other viral problem, populism. The titular Miss Ruby Rauf is a struggling university student in
London who attends a talk by trim, springy-haired actor-turnedpolitician Saif Haq. Saif wants to transform their home country, Pakistan. He wishes to cleanse politics; he wants to punish the corrupt; all he wants for himself and his millions of countrymen is justice.